PARIS — The ball bounced around the rim five times.
Five!
Late in the fourth quarter, Stephen Curry came off a brick-house screen from Joel Embiid, Serbian guard Ognjen Dobric ran into the wall like Wile E. Coyote and collapsed to the floor, a shot from the top of the NBA's greatest shooter that ever played the game looked like it landed on a craps table.
With just 144 seconds left in this FIBA-style game with the clock not on their side, the ball smashed through the net to give Team USA their first lead since midway through the first quarter. Ultimately, Team USA managed to overcome a 17-point deficit against Serbia, 95-91, to complete one of the most stunning comebacks in history, heading into a match against France for the Olympic gold medal. In time, we will truly understand how close this team, featuring many of the greatest talents of all time including LeBron James, Curry and Kevin Durant, came to surpassing the notoriety of the 2004 team that won the bronze medal in Athens and, as a result, prompted self-reflection within the national team.
Stephen Curry, Team USA in the lead.#ParisOlympics | 📺 NBC, USA Network, Peacock pic.twitter.com/C4MUUl1v78
— NBC Olympics & Paralympics (@NBCOlympics) August 8, 2024
Phew.
Honestly, I don't know what else to say.
When I cover international competitions such as the Olympics, I find it quite unpleasant to see non-American media cheering for their respective teams. Some reporters cheer for fights between reporters, which is taboo in the United States, and some even shout derogatory remarks about American players like Joel Embiid (true story).
But as I watched the Americans push to their limits, anticipating the scrutiny from people like me if they missed, I silently hoped for a shot like Curry's late three-pointer — a dynamic that doesn't exist in the NBA, born of the reality that we know some groups of people much better than others — and when Curry took a pass from Bogdan Bogdanovic and finished the job by running east-west and drilling a left-to-right layup to put the U.S. national team up 91-86 with 1 minute and 1 second left, I felt a sense of relief that the Golden State Warriors star was finally getting a chance to shine in his first Summer Olympics.
According to USA head coach Steve Kerr after the game, Curry looked like a pressure player early in the game. He only scored in single figures in three of Team USA's four Olympic games, but he averaged an impressive 7.3 points in his first four. The lone highlight of his first Olympic experience was a 24-point exhibition game against Serbia on July 17.
That was child's play by comparison: Curry was dazzling, hitting 12 of 19 shots and 9 of 14 3-pointers for a total of 36 points.
How many times in his illustrious career has he made that many three-pointers with 14 or fewer attempts? According to Stathead.com, the answer is 9 times, which includes 1,103 games (0.8% of the total) across both the regular season and playoffs. FYI, those games were 40 minutes long, not the 48 minutes you see in the NBA. The fact that this game came in a game where Team USA was in desperate need of a basketball hero makes it all the more epic.
“There were times in the last couple weeks where I thought he was trying too hard,” said Warriors coach Kerr, who has had a front-row seat to Curry's greatness for 10 years. “He's just so engaged, he works so hard on the game all the time. I wanted to tell him, 'Just take a break,' because we all know what kind of player he is and what kind of player he is. But he's not that kind of player. He works so hard, and the work he's put in over the last couple weeks has made him so determined to come into the game tonight.”
The 36-year-old Curry, who made the most of his Olympic experience off the court, insisted the walls were not closing in.
“I didn't feel any (pressure) because we were winning every game by 15, 20 points,” he said. “I know I can affect the game in other ways, but tonight, about two minutes into the game, I realized I was being watched and they were playing a different type of defense against us. Obviously, they were scoring a ton of points, so I just had to go with it and get absorbed in the moment.”
“You do whatever the game demands. In the last game (a big win over Brazil), I took three shots but I didn't feel like forcing them because that's not what the game demanded. That's the beauty of the U.S. National Team and FIBA and this experience. Every game, somebody's different.”
Still, Curry's story makes it clear that this role has been a big adjustment for him. He shot 35.7 percent from the field and 25 percent from three-point range (5-for-20) against Serbia, averaging just seven shots per game. What gets lost in the discussion is the reality that it will be very difficult for many of the best players on this team to figure out how to play the way they do on an NBA team.
“I didn't have a lot of chances,” Curry said candidly, “I didn't shoot the ball well the whole tournament, but I was confident going into the moment.”
And he did.
As one of the greatest basketball games of all time came to an end, James, who was part of the 2004 team that the USA Basketball program would like everyone to forget, tossed the ball in the air, looked down and saw an elated Curry embrace him. It was a surreal sight in every sense, the sight of these two NBA rivals sharing memories no one could have imagined with the Cavs and Warriors teams that met in the Finals for so many years.
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So I asked James where the game ranks in terms of pure emotion.
“That's pretty amazing,” said James, the four-time champion and Los Angeles Lakers star who contributed greatly to the win with a triple-double (16 points, 12 rebounds, 10 assists). “I'm 39 years old and going into my 22nd season. I don't know how many more opportunities and moments like this I'm going to have to compete for big things and play in big games.”
This game wasn't just big, it was bigger. It was pure magic, laced with history as the most important players went out of their way for national pride. You can almost hear Phoenix Suns star Kevin Durant, who won two championships with Curry for Golden State, say he's never seen anything like it before.
“Steph, that was a godly performance,” Durant said, after forcing Bogdanovic into a crucial backcourt violation with 1:34 left in the game and then hitting a stunning jump shot with 34 seconds left to put Team USA up 93-89. “Oh man, (Curry) was strong. He seemed to struggle throughout the tournament and we always said he could be a different player every night. And tonight he showed up, man…”
Durant was nearly at a loss for words.
“He made shot after shot, got a steal and finished with a layup,” he said. “He was everywhere tonight. It was one of the best games I've ever seen him play.”
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(Top photo of Stephen Curry and Aleksa Avramovic by Ezra Shaw/Getty Images)
